Eight Was Enough
Flash Fiction | 3 Minute Read
Here’s another edition of“first draft fiction.” Last Sunday marked the next trip with Word West Press’s workshop entitled “Write at the Museum” led by David Queen. This week we met up at American Folk Art Museum across from Lincoln Center in NYC.
This week’s prompt was “gifted” from a fellow participant. You can scroll to the bottom of this post to see the piece of artwork that inspired this writing. I had a late start to the piece, so it is not nearly as long as the previous post I wrote for this workshop from the Met, “The Terrible Dinner.”
This story is a 3 minute read.
EIGHT WAS ENOUGH
I was the youngest of eight, so, if I am being honest, when Mother Ireme advised, “Eight is enough, Emily,” I always took it as an insult rather than guidance. I assumed she was exhausted by my childishness and ignorance in the face of all of my siblings’ growing mastery of the world. She had told them all the same, but, in the end, I was the only one who didn’t listen.
Wilbur had gotten a position in St. Ann’s Loan & Lenders when Geraldine was born. She was our fourth child, and the others had begun to help with the harvest. Wilbur’s job blessed us with finances on top of the sustenance the land already provided. We were wont for nothing, except a larger family. In the beginning years with St. Ann’s, Wilbur was eager to grow every aspect of our lives, showering us with gifts from town – books, fabrics, toys from a toymaker, table settings from across the sea – but, most important to me, he frequently shared my bed, gifting me four more children.
By the time the eighth was born to us, our eldest, James, and his sister Abigail had taken on most of the responsibilities of the land so that I was needed for not much more than mothering. I had always planned on stopping having children after my eighth, but just as I was weaning him from my milk, the devil found his way into my life.
He was a traveler named Jonathan who knocked on my door on a night when Wilbur was not at home. Wilbur had been called away to Charleston more frequently as his promotions demanded his presence in meetings of import I could hardly fathom. He left in his high fashion, wearing the finest hats and haircuts, while I was left behind feeling more like the livestock in the barn. I tried to remember that I was the woman who Wilbur courted and sent letters to claiming that my long locks of hair captured the sunshine to light and warm his heart in even the coldest winters, or that the stars had spared some brethren to lay within my eyes to mesmerize him, but as more of Wilbur’s joys and excitements came from stories from afar, even though he joyfully shared them with us all, I was certain my loveliness had faded for him in the same way it had for me. I was dull, while Wilbur exuded brilliance.
Jonathan, on the other hand, was a being of dust and dullness, as much land as man. The familiarity of that kind of existence was an immediate comfort to me. He was polite, simple, and kind. He played with the children while I cooked supper and asked me to tell stories by the fireplace while they slept. Jonathan only stayed on our land three nights, but, although I saw the moon was high and knew the beats of my body enough to understand how to ensure I’d birth no more than eight children, on the night Jonathan told me my smile was more luminous than the moon, I shared a bed with him.
Regardless of the tales I’ve told Wilbur, or the other children, I know the twins are branches off of another family tree, a sapling grown in the shadow of our own. As every year passes I fear the truth is harder to hide. Jonathan’s children are growing into their own persons, their differences undeniable, their contrariness to their “father” Wilbur turning more into contempt. I am starting to worry that instead of a sapling, they are a broken branch unable to sustain life anew. My tree was not meant to bear so much fruit, I should have listened to my mother.
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The Inspiration
For all of us at this week’s visit to the American Folk Art Museum, it was our first time. The museum was an odd, tiny space, filled with a menagerie of oddities, more of them inspired by trauma than not. Although the collections were contained within only three small rooms, the weight of the visit stuck with each of us long after leaving. I am happy to say that my prompt “gift” was one of the less grim pieces, but the crack across the frame of this family tree, paired with so much of the other artists stories I read in the day spelled only one thing for me: foreboding.
This was awesome! Like a whole novel in one short story. I'd love to read this as long novel!!! My favorite line--"Jonathan, on the other hand, was a being of dust and dullness, as much land as man." Brilliant!